I've tried Chameleon and Valyrian root tea blends before thinking they might make good sleep aids, but I've never had any luck with them. A lot people say they find those very relaxing, but I wasn't even catching a placebo effect.
So for a while I just assumed all this herbal tea bullshit I see in stores and pharmacies must be just a step above homeopathic products. They're probably pretty good if you like the taste of the herbal blends and find sipping a warm beverage relaxing in itself, but otherwise a waste of time. Clearly if they really worked they wouldn't be sold in large supermarket chains. Instead they'd be relegated to the weird, near grey market status that Kratom seems to exist in, right?
Today at the store I just happened to notice something very alarming. A box of Kava blend tea was the absolute one and only herbal tea variety on the shelf to include a warning asking you to consult your doctor before use, and stating that minors and pregnant women should not consume this product.
Well, that warning instantaneously lit up the junkie addict center of my brain like a Christmas tree, and I impulse bought two boxes. This might have major negative health consequences? Wow, must be the fucking good stuff. I got home and brewed six of them into a single mug of tea, and yep, this shit is psychoactive all right. Subtle, but definitely not placebo subtle. It quite honestly feels similar to a moderate dose of Gabapentin, and it's making me sleepy.
I sure wish I knew this before I most likely took 15 years off the lifespan of my kidneys by using 200mg of Diphenhydramine every night for years just to have a fighting chance at falling asleep more often than every two days.
hell yeah, that's the spirit!
I used to be so fucking careful when it came to doing drugs the safe and responsible way. I'd read for hours about pharmacology and shit while taking in as many first hand accounts online as I could before agonizing over exactly how much I should use on my first go down to the mg and cut ratio.
Well, that mindset turned out to not be sufficient for all types of drugs, and I got addicted to opiates despite the utmost care in my initial experimentation. Things slowly fell off the rails from there. I've done so many absurd and horrendous things to get high and avoid the hell of opioid withdrawal. I've gone through so many sketchy batches of disgusting, stepped on street dope out of sheer desperation.
I've been clean from full agonist opioids for years now, but I think my brain is broken ,and I can no longer be arsed in the slightest on breaking my habit of doing stupid doses of a drug before I even know what it'll be like.
The person I would call my soulmate if I believed in that shit—who isn’t talking to me anymore—has been doing heroin since they were 18; sometimes I say, the silver lining to the heartbreaking fact that I’ll never really get to know them, is that I’ll never have to know the darkest depths of that iceberg. Because I know it’s there. I know what I don't know, and if I dwell on it for even a second I need to smoke until I’m half braindead.
And I also like to say them and I both are the type of person who, if you put some drugs out in front of us and say “Here’s some drugs,” we’ll just hork it down. That's kinda how I started doing meth.
“This isn’t cocaine.”
/snorts/
Also, I have been a very infrequent opioid user for two years now? Three. I’ll take a couple hits, then it’ll be weeks or months before I do it again. I’ve had a couple close calls because when I reach the absolute worst depths of my depression I’ll get excited about it, like oh boy I finally get to be a junkie! I’m finally getting addicted to opioids! That was how I was with meth at the beginning, like a form of self harm, or a cry for help.
Most of the time I’m fucking terrified by the thought of being dopesick, fetty is gross and my one source for black isn’t talking to me anymore (no relation).
But who knows.